1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image outputting apparatus and a control method thereof which read coded information embedded in a document and control image outputting based on the coded information.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are control techniques to encode a copy lock or copy restricting information of a document into a low-visibility code and to embed the code into the document and a technique to read the embedded information to control the copy lock or copy restriction. There are known image forming apparatuses having these security techniques (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-280469). Generally, managers of the image forming apparatuses have a need to improve security by using such a security technique to prevent spread of secret documents by copying, by restricting a part of the functions thereof, or the like.
Meanwhile, there is a view point of reducing TCO (cost reduction associated with drum durability, toner consumption, ink consumption, a charging counter, or the like). One method of reducing the TCO may be to suppress consumption of color toner or color ink. That is, there is a need to make users willingly to use black-and-white copying.
However, when the low-visibility code information is embedded in an image of a document, the low-visibility code information may be recorded with a particular color (e.g., yellow). Accordingly, in view of a priority for security, it is essential in copying to copy the low-visibility code information with the same color as in the document. That is, a security hole is caused by outputting in black-and-white the low-visibility code information to be recorded with the particular color such as yellow. From this reason, it is normally a standard to read and print a document in color mode to prevent the security hole to be caused, when coded information such as the low-visibility code information is printed for improving the security.
In this case, from a user's viewpoint, a desired function such as a black-and-white printing is restricted. That is, when a user desires to carry out the black-and-white copying, the user has to do an additional job to change setting. On the other hand, from a manager's viewpoint, there remains a problem that it becomes difficult to reduce the TCO.